Google.ps – which has since returned to its usual look – was
reportedly suspended Tuesday following the attack.

Earlier, at the defaced website, renamed by hackers “Google
Owned,” their statement was posted, reading: “uncle google we
say hi from palestine to remember you that the country in google
map not called israel. its called Palestine”. (Original
spelling preserved.)

The hackers also posted a Google Map image that showed Israeli
borders, the West Bank and Gaza, but does not outline Palestinian
territory. It was not entirely clear why, given that Google had
created a domain for Palestine in 2009.

The screenshot was accompanied with the following: “#Question
: what would happens if we changed the country title of Isreal to
Palestine in google maps !!! it would be revolution.”

“So Listen to rihanna and be cool :P,” concluded the
hackers, who signed their statement as users Dod, Hij@ker,
alzher, Mr_AnarShi-T, and toxico-dz.

Google officials said that their own servers were not hacked.
Instead, Google’s Palestinian domain was hijacked, redirecting
web-surfers to another Internet site.

“There was an issue with the DNS registry in Palestine. As a
result, some users going to google.com.ps and a few other web
addresses were redirected to a different website. This issue
appears to be resolved,” Al Arabiya quoted Ramy Kandil,
Google’s public relations executive in the Middle East and North
Africa, as saying.

According to ZDNet, after the successful DNS hijacking attempt,
the search engine’s home page was redirected to a Morocco-based
server. The tech news outlet also stated that they checked the
Palestinian top-level domain provider with the WHOIS service and
it confirmed that Google.ps remained under the ownership of
Google US in Mountain View, California.

In May, Google stirred controversy when it changed the regional
search page name from “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine.”
The move was condemned by Israeli officials.

Last November, the UN General Assembly upgraded the status of its
Palestinian mission to that of “non-member observer
state.”